


Self Fulfilled Prophecy

by sumomomochi



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Not Canon Compliant, not anymore at least whops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 21:16:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4364489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sumomomochi/pseuds/sumomomochi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The email starts with the typical “Hello, you don’t know me but...” bullshit, except you can’t bring yourself to delete it when the name attached to the account is the same as the mysterious package you’ve been neglecting and the boy in your head that won’t leave you alone.</p><p>You read the email through and it’s got all the markers of bad spam; the awkward formality and borderline faked familiarity in introductions, but it spins off into the most surreal shit imaginable and he ain’t no Nigerian prince.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> written something like two years ago, well before the gigapause sssssssso definitely not canon compliant anymore whops

You get a package one afternoon, out of the blue, and you’re almost certain you didn’t order it.

It’s not even addressed to you, not exactly. The name on the box belongs to the kid you’ll sometimes dream about, with your hair and your face and eyes the colour of a polluted sunset.

You feel like it’s deja vu and it’s the same sort of gut tugging almost-memory as when you heard John Crocker kicked the bucket. Your internal clock has been stuck on four-thirteen ever since, broken in the same way your favourite watch is, and it’s become a familiar ache. You pay it no mind and ditch the package on the counter, intending to take it back to the post office next time you leave your house.

It sits in your kitchen for two weeks, collecting bills while you find yourself tit deep in creative juices and then you get an email on a personal account that’s strictly for correspondences with two specific people.

It’s neither of your ladies.

You almost ignore it, assuming spam because it starts with the typical “Hello, you don’t know me but...” bullshit, except you can’t bring yourself to delete it when the name attached to the account is the same as the mysterious package you’ve been neglecting and the boy in your head that won’t leave you alone.

You read the email through and it’s got all the markers of bad spam; the awkward formality and borderline faked familiarity in introductions, but it spins off into the most surreal shit imaginable and he ain’t no Nigerian prince.

Dirk Strider claims to be eight, your brother, and contacting you from a dystopian future to inquire about whether or not the package containing promotional freebies actually arrived.

You tear into the box because it’s three in the morning and you’ve been running solely on coffee for two days and his explanation is so surreal you almost believe him.

The box contains exactly what he says it should and you’re floored.

He replies almost immediately to the hesitant email you send him, confirming the packages arrival and this time he actually sounds eight, asking you to remember to put it in box nine. You scrawl out his directions on a sticky note and stick it in amidst the rest of your collection of ideas in a daze.

You pass out a couple hours later and when you wake up, you’ve got another email from him, a terse affirmation of receival and his postscript reads, “I’m sorry I didn’t wait until my birthday to open the box like I’m supposed to.”

You get a dozen new packages the next week, all things for him that he says are supposed to go in the boxes labeled sixteen. He gives you the dimensions of the boxes and tells you there are nine of them, and you decide to get a storage locker asap. You’re not sure why you believe him.

And then, at the end of the month, he emails you again, telling you he’s sorry he racked up your credit card bill for the month and you just about piss yourself when he promises your script gets picked up soon because you haven’t told fucking _anyone_ that you were working on one, let alone that you finished it.

You can’t bring yourself to be mad when you do finally open your bill. You just get spectacularly shitfaced and try not to beat your head against the wall when you remember through your hangover that you had the balls to send your script out.

Four months later he emails you a single word -- “Congratulations.” -- and that afternoon you close the deal on your first movie.

xxx

Rose says you shouldn’t humour him as much as you do, but you know for a fact that every word she writes for her novels are put down from inside a nursery that hasn’t ever been used and sometimes she’ll call you drunk off her ass crying about how she misses her baby.

She’s never had a child. Neither have you, nor have you ever had a little brother, but you both believe Dirk. You’ve even started recording videos of yourself reading bedtime stories, the same ones he’s said he’s watched every night for as long as he can remember.

He emails you one morning when he deems it his birthday -- it’s never quite the same day, but always in the same week span. He’s fourteen now, give or take four hundred years. You can feel the second hand ticking down now, your internal clock winding backwards ever so slowly as you read mind numbingly technical instructions. 

Apparently, you were the one who built his main robo caregiver based off his instructions in what has to be the most ridiculous time loop in existence. It takes you seven months to figure it all out, in between your regular duties as a critically acclaimed director and screenwriter, and the entire time your living room is transformed into a sea of boxes and wires. You dump all the leftovers into a box for him, since he likes it so much. On a whim you label it eight.

You don’t realize that you’ve just given your baby brother a freaking soldering iron for his eighth birthday until two months later, but it’s already too late. That ship has already sailed and your arbitrary decision is what sparks his interest in robotics in the first place.

He’s not quite fifteen when you get an email to accompany yet another package -- you’ve made friends with all the UPS drivers with how often you see them. He begs you not to open the box you literally just got, asking you to promise not to before he orders whatever’s got him in a tizzy. Obviously, you do, since you’ve already got what he wants and the way his email sounds so flustered makes you snicker.

You teasingly ask him if it’s a dildo on your way back from his storage locker after he’s informed you of the final price and he refuses to speak to you for a week.

(You don’t know it yet, but you’ll remember this whole exchange when you prepare for your departure and you’ll write “my little boys all grown up :y” in red sharpie on the side of the box because you’re a dick and that’s what brothers do.)

xxx

This is it. You know it, Rose knows it.

You won’t be coming back.

You’ve scrubbed your entire apartment top to bottom, the one you’ve kept a hold of for the last ten years, despite living in sunny SoCal. Every box you’ve ever filled for him are stacked in the living room, collections labeled four through sixteen, boxes of books and supplies and clothes and burned dvds of yourself talking to him lined up neatly against one wall. Every other apartment on this floor has been filled with provisions, rows upon rows of them, of everything you’d think would keep for long enough, doubles of things he might need extra of.

This is it.

The second hand is just a click before full vertical in your mental countdown, quivering in anticipation of the apocalypse and you sit down in front of your camera, in a sea of boxes with a robot and a book and you read to someone you’ll never meet.

It’s the last thing you do before you die.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heads up for brief mention of stridercest but like no details or anything. its the end of the world what are you gonna do?

You’ve always known your brother was dead. You’re a kid, yes, but you’re not _dumb_. You’ve read the headlines more times than you can count, screamed bloody murder at Sawtooth until he let you. It was the only thing you could never access on the internet and it _hurts_ to know for sure that he’s dead but not as bad as it hurt thinking he just didn’t want to be there with you.

You still wish you weren’t all alone.

You’re seven when you share this sentiment with Roxy and eight when you figure out how to contact him.

Together, the two of you figured out that all the content you’re accessing on the internet is from hundreds of years ago and it takes four months to work out how it works. Roxy’s the one who spots the line of code designating time frame and you’ve got enough spare parts to put together a server, copying the one both of you are routed through and it allows you to access specific points in time.

You spend all your time from then on fucking with survey sites, gathering enough points for a free promo you have sent to your apartment four hundred years in the past. It takes you nine days to go through all the boxes, looking for the correct logo, and then another four to gather up the courage to email the address Roxy found for you.

You know she still hasn’t tried to email her mom and it’s the knowledge that you’ll do it first that makes you finally hit send. You’re not sure if you’re happy or terrified when you get a reply.

When you open the box you asked him to put it in, the only set that has a single box, you find it and cry for two hours.

You don’t even care what it is, just that it’s here and it _worked_.

You watch Roxy scream and jump about her room in excitement when you tell her, and you’re glad you had the foresight to turn down the volume on your computer.

He looks younger than usual in the video that came with this years box, snickering as he tells you he knew you’d open the box before your birthday and you sort of feel bad you didn’t do it the way you were supposed to but he’s not angry about it, so you guess it’s okay. You promise the screen you won’t open the next set (the set labeled sixteen, the last set) until your birthday for real.

He gives you his credit card number and tells you to go easy until a specific date.

You come in exactly three cents under your allotted spending limit for the four months immediately following that first attempt and you congratulate him on his movie deal the day it happens.

xxx

You’re glad you decided to keep your solicitations with your brother linear. It’s not like with Jane and Jake, where the program routing you to them forces you to stay linear. This was your choice entirely, your secondary server set to change over the corresponding day in the past in time with your own computer’s calculations. Talking with him like this is nice and you like that you have more control over your possessions.

You’re still frustrated that every attempt to add him to your chumroll has failed, but at least you have something.

When you’re twelve, your video contains instructions on how to make a cake and where the cake mix is located. You watch him make one himself four times before you follow along and Jane’s a little surprised when you suddenly tell her how much you love cake.

(You tell her it’s special this year, that you forgot how good it is since you don’t eat it much, not that this is literally the first time you’ve ever had cake and it’s so good you eat it all in one go, and even though you puke, you don’t regret it.)

When you’re thirteen, your video is six hours long and consists of him rambling about anything that comes to mind. You think it’s your favourite, and you watch it constantly from then on, emulating his hand gestures and memorizing every line.

(He spends an hour rambling about puberty, which is really gross, especially considering how he phrases some things, but it explains a lot.)

When you’re fourteen, your video is short, him simply telling you that you have to give him the instructions to build Sawtooth, and so you email past-him with the file that was also contained on the DVD.

You’re fifteen when decide you want a sex aid. The front room of this apartment is cleared of boxes. Sawtooth and Squarewave have consolidated the last of the supply boxes into one of the other apartments.

The game is going to start soon and you know it, so why the fuck not.

You make your brother promise not to open the box before you order it anyway, and for there not being a whole lot left, it still takes you two hours to find the correct box.

He’s written “my little boys all grown up :y” in his characteristic red scrawl and you just about die of embarrassment when you come back to find the email asking if it’s a dildo, because that is exactly what it is.

You realize after you’ve avoided him for almost a week that it was probably your silence that confirmed his suspicions but you can’t bring yourself to adjust the clock on your server to change the course of events.

That ship sailed as soon as you found the box was written on.

(You’re thankful he doesn’t ever bring it up again. You understand that, at your age, it is completely normal to masturbate, but you don’t think you could actually face discussing it with him when occasionally it’s him you’ll masturbate to. Your other friends come up more often, as do various long dead celebrities, and you don’t particularly _care_ since, when you’re one of two humans still alive and the brother you’re thinking of has been dead for centuries, the fact that it’s incest is non-relevant.)

xxx

You’re almost seventeen and so tired of the game’s bullshit, you don’t even care that literally the first thing that happens after you’re turned into a god is that you’re flung out into space by what may or may not be the same sea witch that killed your brother. You just sigh, exasperated, and watch the streak of green light in the distance grow closer for a moment.

Eventually, you attempt to make your way back to Derse, but no matter how long you stay pointed at your moon, it never gets any closer and you can’t tell if it’s because the game has decided to keep you where you are or if it’s because you’re actually incapable of propelling yourself forward.

The green light grows steadily closer, however, and it’s not long until you see it’s a meteor headed straight at you.


End file.
